unday suit every day, carried a beautiful gold watch, and was coolly
and complacently at ease, even with Major Dabney and a foreign-born and
traveled Ardea.

Later in the summer the envy died down and Thomas Jefferson developed a
pronounced case of hero-worship, something to the disgust of the
colder-hearted, older boy. It did not last very long, nor did it leave
any permanent scars; but before Thomas Jefferson was fully convalescent
the subtle flattery of his adulation warmed the subject of it into
something like companionship, and there were bragging stories of
boarding-school life and of the world at large to add fresh fuel to the
fire of discontent.

Though Thomas Jefferson did not know it, his deliverance on that side
was nigh. It had been decided in the family council of two--with a
preacher-uncle for a casting-vote third--that he was to be sent away to
school, Chiawassee Coal and Iron promising handsomely to warrant the
expense; and the decision hung only on the choice of courses to be
pursued.

Caleb had marked the growing hunger for technical knowledge in the boy,
and had secretly gloried in it. Here, at least, was a strong stream of
his own craftsman's blood flowing in the veins of his son.

"It'd be a thousand pities to spoil a good iron man and engineer to make
a poor preacher, Martha," he objected; this for the twentieth time, and
when the approach of autumn was forcing the conclusion.

"I know, Caleb; but you don't understand," was the invariable rejoinder.
"You know that side of him, because it's your side. But he is my son,
too; and--and Caleb, the Lord has called him!"

Gordon's smile was lenient, tolerant, as it always was in such
discussions.

"Not out loud, I reckon, little woman; leastwise, Buddy don't act as if
he'd heard it. As I've said, there's plenty of time. He's only a little
shaver yet. Let him try the school in the city for a year 'r so, goin'
and comin' on the railroads, nights and mornin's, like the Major's
gran'daughter. After that, we might see."

But now Martha Gordon was fighting the last great battle in the war of
spiritual repression which had been going on ever since the day when
that text, _Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers_, had
been turned into a whip of scorpions to chasten her, and she fought as
those who will not be denied the victory. Caleb yielded finally, but
with some such hand-washing as Pilate did when he gave way to the
pressure from without